


the color of my sky

by trashyeggroll



Series: A Red Thread [2]
Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/F, Fix-It, Niko Deserves Better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2019-12-07 16:31:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18237413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashyeggroll/pseuds/trashyeggroll
Summary: A re-imagining of Niko's return to the series, episode by episode.





	1. Witch Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read part one of this series, it might be tough to follow along with the bits of changes to canon that I'm making and why.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Macy breaks the "dad" news to the sisters, Niko gets some bonus time with Mel, until she knows she needs to send her back.

_“I’m walking on sunshine, whoa-oh…”_

Between the not-unpleasant voice ringing loudly through the door and the beam of sunlight hitting her face, Niko Hamada jerked out of a sleep cycle with a strangled gasp. Her neck ached, and she wasn’t in her house—

“...acapella group? Good for you!”

Ah. Vera-Vaughn Manor. Niko rubbed her eyes and kicked out her feet as the clarity of consciousness slowly filled in the blanks. She’d been studying up on different types of shifters in the Book and must’ve fallen asleep sitting at one of the attic’s tables. Brown eyes narrowed at the small dots of drool left on a page of her notebook.

“Thought I should do something fun after…”

Pushing back from the desk, Niko put a hand on her bad knee, full of the scar tissue her magical body wouldn’t heal, and pushed herself upright with the other. Zelda had texted her several times and called once, asking if she wanted to get summoned back to the safehouse, and then devolving into nothing but a series of suggestive emojis and Mel’s name.

Maggie’s familiar voice belted out “Walking on Sunshine” again as the sisters reached the attic door, pausing there to whisper to each other for a second and smirk.

“You didn’t even wake up when Macy found you here this morning,” explained the youngest sister as Mel carried the tray of food to the table where she’d fallen asleep.

“Some guard bear,” joked Niko, leaning in for a quick kiss from Mel after the time witch set down the goods—six fluffy pancakes, bacon, several pieces of toast, and a giant salad bowl of mixed, cut up fruit. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know.” Mel gestured for her to sit back down. “But you still look like you’re losing weight.”

“At some point, and I didn’t think it was possible, all this eating just gets boring. Except for when you make me delicious pancakes.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere. This is your health.”

Maggie cleared her throat, and Niko could practically hear her eyes rolling as she added, “You’re the _only_ one Mel makes food for.”

The were sat to dig into the bowl of fruit and changed the subject, “Is that the song for your audition? You sound fantastic when you’re not muffled by a shower.”

Smiling brightly, the youngest Vera opened her mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by Macy as she stepped into the attic: “Hi. Can I talk to you both? Downstairs?”

With the help of her current mouthful of bacon, Niko tried not to react to the sharp, acidic scent of Macy’s nervousness, but the feeling was written all over the oldest sister’s face anyway. Mel gave her another fleeting kiss, and they headed to follow Macy downstairs. That… didn’t seem good.

 

* * *

 

Mel stared at the piece of paper Macy had shoved in front of their faces, trying to form even the most basic sense of what it was all supposed to mean. A blue, somewhat wave-shaped graph sat in the top righthand corner, but otherwise all she could really make out was a series of letters that _might_ be actual words alongside numbers describing a percentage of something. “What I looking at?”

“Chromosomes,” replied Macy, quickly and with a small smile as she took the paper back. “Yeah. This here is the chromatid, and that right there is the centromere.”

Maggie’s voice was strained when she replied, but still managed to come out patient: “No offense, Mace, but I kind of have a busy day.”

“Okay, ah, hah…” As her hands gesticulated meaninglessly, Macy began to pace, her frenetic energy filling the room. “I’m just trying to work up the courage to tell you both something.”

“Macy, just spit it out, we’re sisters,” encouraged Mel, trying for casual even as her own heartbeat ticked faster in anticipation. Whatever Macy was trying to say, it unnerved Mel to think that it was making her just as nervous as when she delivered the news about being a secret sister.

The small affirmation, at least, was enough to get Macy to briefly stop her idle shuffling. “Yes, okay.” She let out a wheezing laugh and suddenly shifted to the right, locking eyes with Maggie, and the words fell haphazardly out of her mouth like rocks: “Ray’s not your father. My dad’s your real dad, and so, we’re full sisters.”

For a solid four or five seconds, Mel didn’t even superficially understand what Macy was saying, and then each word gradually processed. _Chromosomes. Full sisters._ A pit of anxiety opened in her stomach, and a coldness filled the space. That meant—

“And you’re only half.” Macy directed these words to Mel as she pulled up a chair, her face pressed tightly into a nervous grin.

Mel glanced at Maggie, who sat frozen on the couch, facing slightly away from her, as her own brain spun off into the next dimension, unhelpfully chucking random memories of Ray into her mind’s eye. And by that, it really meant memories of important moments that Ray missed. High school graduations, birthdays, recitals. She remembered the absence more than the man. And that empty space was _all_ hers now.

“That’s impossible,” she argued, only able to come up with those two words.

“It’s not. Really. It’s right here, the test is 100% reproducible. I checked it twice myself.” Macy went on about the reliability of DNA and its purpose like a sixth grade science teacher, and Mel’s body tensed with reflexive anger.

“Where did the DNA even come from?”

“When Niko was missing, the police outsourced the DNA sampling from our house because our lab could get the results faster. So, Mom was lying to you about more than just a couple things. Maybe some very important ones. At least this one—big lie.”

Maggie made her first noise since the first truth drone had struck, a small sigh that heralded tears. Mel knew it well, and she pinned Macy with a glare. “Nice. Great job, Macy.”

“What? _You_ told me to spit out the news,” protested the older sister, her voice spiking as her brows knitted together.

“I didn’t know _this_ was the news—“

“So now you’re blaming me for _the nature of_ the news?”

Maggie’s voice shook a bit, her head dropping forward, but it was enough to interrupt the older sisters’ back-and-forth. “This can’t be happening. This is… not happening.”

“Oh, I know, but look at it like this—this all must be connected, us not growing up together, Mom giving me up. And then the lab, the impersonation of the Chancellor, and why they murdered Mom. My dad being your dad is a clue.” Even though she was furious with her, Mel could sense a sincere sort of hopefulness, if that was the right word for it, in Macy’s voice.

But the oldest sister trailed off as Maggie looked up at her, and from Mel’s angle, she could see her younger sister’s jaw tighten with familiar rage.

“So, Maggie, I think you should call Ray, and find out if he knows that he’s not your dad, and it could help us piece it all together.”

That little bit of goodwill from a few seconds earlier dissipated as Mel shot back, “Don’t ask her to do that after all that we’ve been through—“

But it was Maggie who responded, and the tone and weight of the words made something crack in Mel’s chest, letting out all the air: “Oh, stop using me against her, you don’t even know how I feel about this!”

“See? You don’t always know what she wants.”

Maggie’s head snapped back around to Macy. “Oh my God, and neither do you! Like, I definitely did not want to have this dropped on me right before my audition and right after we found out our mom was murdered. Everyone lies to me. Mom, Ray, saying he would be here for Christmas, the Elders, and now your dad, Macy—but I guess _he_ didn’t lie because he just never bothered to meet me in nineteen years.”

“Well, I’m sure—you know, we don’t know the whole story,” argued Macy, ever positive, but sounding increasingly desperate.

Mel, benefiting from nineteen years of living with Maggie, knew they were far beyond that point of no return. “We know Mom lied. About you, and about Maggie’s dad, about us being witches, about our aunts. So the whole story here is that our mother was a compulsive liar, and we never really knew her at all.”

“Or, this could be a huge clue, about why Mom did things the way she did. Just—look on the bright side.”

“Stop trying to control our reactions to this, Macy,” groaned Mel. “We can feel how we feel, okay?”

“Look, I’m sorry I don’t know how to tell someone their dad’s not their dad! I just, I _thought_ that Maggie would want to know, and why Mom did what she did is something I _really_ want to figure out.”

Mel knew she shouldn’t, knew the anger clouding her every thought would make her regret her reaction later… but this was now. “Our lives are not data you can arrange so it makes sense. And now I’m late for work.”

And with that, she stood and stomped up the stairs, hearing behind her:

“I’m late, too.”

“Maggie—“

The front door slammed.

 

* * *

 

Having licked every breakfast plate clean, Niko thought about going downstairs, but her bear ears picked up some seriously unhappy tones from below, so instead, she slipped on her noise-cancelling headphones to respect the sisters’ privacy and pulled out her phone. She texted Zelda to explain what had happened the night before, and then scrolled through the morning local news. A shooting out in the county, victim in serious condition at Hilltowne Hospital. The highway running alongside town had been closed for thirty minutes in the wee hours of the morning due to a semi-truck crash turned pileup. Local man says his taxes are too high. The usual.

As she skimmed the brief coverage of the shooting, Niko’s neck tickled with a familiar feeling. Without moving her head, she slid her gaze from her phone screen to the nearby window, where a bird sat on the closest branch. When their eyes met, it flapped its wings a couple times and hopped to one side. She didn’t recognize the type of bird; it was mostly a mottled brown, almost green in places, but rounder and a subtley different build than birds she was used to seeing out at the safehouse. Kind of big, too, almost the size of a red-tailed hawk (living out in the woods had afforded her plenty of time to Google the abundant fauna she came across).

Pulling one ear of her headphones to the side, she cautiously called out to it, “Hey there.”

“Can you open this window?”

Niko, who had been in the process of standing, tripped on the leg of her chair in surprise and caught herself on the table.

“Careful,” chuckled the bird, opening its wings again.

Something like understanding started to bloom in Niko’s chest, maybe wishful thinking, but she couldn’t see any other reason a talking bird would just show up to see her except—

And then the visitor flew away with a strange whistle, somewhere between a flute and a dial tone, and Niko turned to see what had startled it: Mel, eyes red, standing in the doorway.

“Babe?” Niko tossed her headphones on the table and moved away from the window, the look of devastation on Mel’s face enough to wipe the bird from her mind.

“Walk to work with me?”

“Yeah, I—okay.” Niko looked down at her rumpled plaid shirt and sweatpants and shrugged. “If you’re okay being seen with me in public like this, then of course.”

In lieu of response, Mel wrapped her fingers around Niko’s wrist and yanked her downstairs, pausing only to give her time to slip on shoes and her coat. Niko noticed Macy in the kitchen, but she was facing away, so all the were got was an impression of taut shoulders, and then Mel dragged her outside. They walked about three quarters of the way before the shorter woman broke the silence.

“We had a fight.”

“I’m sorry.” Niko waited, knowing her not-quite-girlfriend needed to unload at her own pace. Mel’s scent was tinged with smoky anger and watery sadness, and the taller woman decided to just put an arm over her shoulders, squeezing lightly, and the scents waned a bit.

With a tiny huff, Mel curled into her side as they continued walking. It was a slightly awkward pace because of their height difference, but they made it to The Haunt, where Mel tugged her onto a bench near the front door, keeping their fingers tightly entwined.

As Niko brushed a thumb across the back of her hand, the witch took a deep breath and let it out in a rush, turning her eyes to the street. “I found out Mom was lying to us about some… pretty big, non-witchy stuff. And I thought we were close, but were we really if I knew so little about her?”

The taller woman continued waiting, watching the thoughts tumble in Mel’s head, her jaw flexing.

“I took it out on Macy, but… She also just said some stuff in this way that… like it changes my relationship with Maggie, or something.”

After taking an extra beat to consider her next words, Niko offered: “That sucks, I’m sorry. Sounds like news most people would have trouble delivering.”

Mel sighed and nodded, playing with the hem of her coat. “I know.”

“It’s pretty big stuff, though. You’re gonna feel what you’re gonna feel. I’m sorry.”

“Why would Mom lie about _so much_ for so long? This isn’t just about the Council drama, it’s about twenty-seven years of never contacting your child. Never telling us we had another sister. It doesn’t make any sense with… my memory of her.”

“For whatever it’s worth, the Marisol that I remember…” Niko swallowed a bubble of emotion that still accompanied those words, even two months after getting that time back. “She was smart, and she knew how to play a long game, but she also undeniably loved you and Maggie. Everything we’ve learned up until this point… She was always trying to protect you. And Maggie, and Macy.”

With another heavy breath, Mel leaned over to rest her cheek against the taller woman’s shoulder. “I miss her.”

“I know, baby. I’m sorry.” Niko kissed her forehead and leaned down to catch Mel’s eyes. “And hey, you’re already late. Want me to pull a bear-in-the-kitchen distraction so you can skip?”

Thankfully, Mel’s expression shifted to a small smile, and she shook her head as they stood. “Sweet of you, but no smashing needed today.”

Niko’s business phone rang, and she fished it out of her pocket with one hand while Mel teasingly and surreptitiously patted her backside through her coat, and she used her other hand to swat Mel’s away. As the witch disappeared into the bar, she hit the green icon and answered, “NH Investigations.”

“Hi, my name is Jerald Shields. I have a job I’d like to discuss with you.”

 

* * *

 

 

The familiar routine of work, pours and pulls, did help clear Mel’s head a bit. Okay, Macy had probably handled that news as well as could be expected for anyone who wasn’t a therapist. But every time she got close to processing past the way her older sister had delivered the news, the gut punches became harder to process, a sharp tug in her chest that made it difficult to focus on removing bottlecaps, and Mel ended up with a cut or two on her hand. She had to push it away, for now.

That became more difficult when Maggie posted a selfie with Lucy, announcing they’d been accepted to the Hilltones—yet no accompanying call or message, sister to sister. According to the official Hilltones Instagram page, the group would unveil the new season’s roster in a small show in two days. Seemed quick, but whatever—if Maggie was going to be like that and not say anything, Mel could do the very sisterly thing and react in kind, at least for a reasonable twenty-four hours. Radio silence it was.

So instead of going home for the night, she just stopped by to grab a change of clothes and her toothbrush. The plan for a quick escape was foiled, however, by finding Macy and Maggie at the bottom of the stairs, arguing again, though they quieted as Mel approached.

Walking past them to grab her coat, Mel felt a flare of irritation at their awkwardness. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, much—just asking Maggie about her singing thing.”

_It’s gonna be like that, then._ Mel raised her eyebrows. “Unlike our mother, Macy, you’re a terrible liar.”

“Fine, it’s about my dad, and I know you don’t want to hear about it.”

“Okay. Got to go.” Mel didn’t wait for a response as she spun on her heel and headed out the door, hot anger stinging her eyes.

As terrible as it felt to admit, she had been anchoring a large part of her rapidly-changing identity in _her_ connection to Maggie. She’d thought that had included a shitty dad, in addition to their lying mom, and the somewhat bumpy childhood they shared. Macy’s little discovery had erased that bit of truth and connection she thought she could hold tight, and now Mel was the lone sister born from a loveless, fake relationship. It was a selfish thing to be worried about, wasn't’ it? Maybe? Nothing could replace the bond of growing up together, right? Except maybe something shiny and new, like a proper older sister who cooked delicious food and was a lot nicer? That cold pit in her chest widened, yawning open to accept the death of the sisterhood she’d thought was hers.

Before she really came back to reality from that spiral of conflicting thoughts, Mel was pulling into the gravel parking spot on the side of the safehouse. Zelda’s car, one of those matchbox-sized Smart cars, wasn’t there, but Niko’s El Camino was. She grabbed her weekender bag and headed inside, dropping her things near the door and hanging her coat in the entryway closet.

“Babe?” she called, toeing off her ankle boots.

It was Jada who leaned into view from the kitchen, four fingers waving. “We’re in here.”

Mel found Niko spooning a white sauce pasta into two bowls, and the investigator quickly grabbed a third, holding it up to her questioningly. “Sure. What’re you two up to?”

“Two things,” said Jada, grabbing her bowl from across the kitchen island. Niko tossed her a spoon with a quick whistle, and the whitelighter-witch barely had to look up to catch it. “One, we’re going on a S’Arcana mission tonight, if you wanna come, and two, my _parents_ called Niko today.”

Mel guessed by the tone that this latter subject was a touchy one. She accepted one of the hand-thrown ceramic bowls of pasta and sat next to the whitelighter-witch at the island. “I definitely could use a mission right now.”

Jada perked an eyebrow, and Mel filled her in on the recent amendments to their parentage backstory and the subsequent sibling fallout. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

Waving off the subject, Mel twirled noodles on her fork as Niko stood and ate across from them. “What’s the mission?”

“You know that local douchebag who just got a light sentence on a rape conviction because the judge was worried about his ‘promising future’?” Jada smirked. “We’re gonna pay him a little visit. Turn the tables on his hunting ground.”

“So down for that, but also, back up—your parents called Niko?”

“To find me.” The whitelighter-witch sighed and pushed her plaits over her shoulder. “My parents gave me up for adoption to hide me from the Elders. My adoptive parents never knew, and when I turned thirteen, my powers started to develop for real. That’s when the S’Arcana found me. Started teaching me about my true potential.”

“Do your adoptive parents know who the S’Arcana are?”

“No, and that’s why they’d do something like this. They were nice, took good care of me, but… _very_ religious. Seventh Day Adventists. I left home at sixteen and have been living with the S’Arcana ever since. I’m sure they think it’s some kind of lesbian commune.”

“What do they want?”

“They want me to go back to Church and stop wearing so much black.” Jada gave a weak smile, but her green eyes were clouded with further thoughts.

“Ah. Well, we’re quite the fun group of conflicted children,” sighed Mel.

On that note, Niko pulled a squared bottle of whiskey from the freezer, making them each a doubleshot in oversized glasses, at least by Mel’s eyeball of the pour.

“To mom issues,” cheers’d Jada, holding up her cup.

“And dad problems,” added Mel as they clinked glasses. She smiled into the first sip of the throat-burning spirit when Niko winked at her from over the rim of her own glass.

Jada transported them to The Haunt, where their quarry was known to prey on women. NH Investigations had looked at the evidence files once the case closed and re-interviewed a couple key witnesses after the sentencing hearing, and the overwhelming consensus was that this wasn’t the first time the man had something like this, and it likely wouldn’t be the last. No time to waste. Not one more victim.

While Niko hovered around the edges, eyes scanning the crowd, Jada and Mel stood chatting at the bar. It wasn’t long before their target showed up with a young woman on his arm.

“What’s the play?” Mel asked Jada, needing a distraction to keep from glaring at the guy.

“He uses rohypnol. When we see him going for it, you freeze the bar, and I’ll lay the hex. Niko will make sure he doesn’t run when you turn it all back on.”

The time witch nodded, watching Niko get convinced to play a round of pool with some regulars—well, _hustled_ was probably a better word for it, knowing Irene and Pickles.

“You two doing alright?”

Mel turned her brown eyes over to Jada’s green ones. “Yeah. Trying to give each other a lot of space right now.”

“So… healthy.” The whitelighter-witch grinned, bumping her shoulder against Mel’s. “Go ahead, ask your questions. I see you.”

“You two have been spending so much time together…”

“Mmhmm.”

“I would never want to intrude on your friendship…”

“Sure.” Jada’s deepening, friendly smirk indicated she was not going to budge without the question.

“But does she maybe, talk about me? Complain? Old stuff, new stuff?”

The whitelighter-witch chuckled, resuming her casual lean against the bar. “No. Not like what you’re worried about. I think you’re forgetting, she got back memories of already processing that old timeline, too. You’re not gonna get punished twice. But, You shouldn’t throw things at people.”

“Oh that was—“ Mel cut off her retort when she spotted their prey’s date heading to the bathroom. “Here we go.”

They watched as the guy waited no less than ten seconds before reaching into his pocket for a small plastic baggie. As he went to put the drug in the woman’s drink, Mel froze the bar, except for Jada and Niko.

As Jada went to place the hex, Mel noticed Niko surreptitiously moving one of the pool balls and clicked her tongue. “Hey, no cheating just because you fell for Pickles’ sob story.”

“It’s twenty dollars,” whined the investigator, even as she put the balls back in place.

“No magic for personal gain.”

Jada leaned near their target’s ear and whispered the hex, _“Justice now. Consequences now. It is so.”_

When Jada had resumed her spot at her side, and Niko begrudgingly went back to losing a bet, Mel let go of time, and the effect was almost instantaneous. From what she could see, the pill stuck to the man’s finger, and in his attempts to remove it, he knocked over his date’s drink just as she was reapproaching. The woman started shouting about him trying to drug her, and the crowd swarmed towards the scene. He started for the door, and Niko stepped in front of him with a hand up. The man slapped it away and swung for the investigator, landing a decent punch, enough that she had to take a half-step back. Without so much as pausing to work out her jaw, Niko jerked her head forward and took a full step, swinging the pool cue in a fsharp, but controlled movement. It snapped against his chest, barely hard enough to bruise, and he unceremoniously topped backwards on his ass as a group stepped in to subdue him, and the bartender on duty called 9-1-1.

Once it was clear the humans had it under control, they stepped out behind the bar, and Jada transported them back to the safehouse. The whitelighter-witch made her exit shortly, and while Niko took a quick shower, Mel crawled into the huge bed they occasionally shared, checking the local ABC station’s live coverage of the fucker’s arrest. Beautiful. Her favorite song.

For all the family drama and emotional turmoil involved in their transition to the world of magic, _this_ type of this was exactly what she wanted to do. It made her love magic, made her mind race with the possibilities of wrongs they could begin to make right, on however small a scale. _Justice now. Consequences now._

She could also use a little of that mood’s instant gratification in her personal life. Niko helped her with some of that after her shower.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, and the sisters _still_ hadn’t talked about The Dad Thing. Niko knew intellectually that she should probably encourage Mel to go back to the manor and stop using the safehouse to avoid confrontation, but… She also very much enjoyed waking up with Mel two days in a row, inevitably hanging partially off the bed while Mel somehow both had all the covers and was halfway on top of her. They’d make coffee and sit together in the kitchen, Niko working on some simple background check jobs on her Surface Pro while Mel, wrapped in a new blanket, used Niko’s New York Times subscription to work on endless crosswords on her MacBook. Sometimes they’d listen to music, sometimes just enjoy the silence, broken up by singing birds and the occasional rise of clucking from the chickens outside.

But, tonight was Maggie’s acapella performance, and Niko knew both Veras were stubborn enough to white-knuckle their fight through Mel missing it, even though both would regret it later.

So as Mel prepped for work and Niko made the bed, the investigator sprang her minimally-invasive-intervention trap: “I picked up a security shift tonight, the Jake Owen show—and _no,_ don’t you dare—“ Niko jabbed a finger at the witch. “Not a _single_ cowboy joke.”

Mel made a “zip” motion across her lips, undoubtedly storing whatever yeehaw puns had come to mind for later teasing.

“So, I won’t be home until late, really late… and it’ll just be you and Z.”

_That_ made Mel’s nose scrunch, and she finished fiddling with her boots. “You kicking me out, Hamada?”

“Just saying, she likes to prank when she knows there’s no risk I’ll trip her trap.”

Sighing, the witch turned and looked at her not-insubstantial pile of dirty clothes. Niko promised she would launder each piece according to the tag instructions and insisted she not worry about them.

Still, Mel was pouting, and Niko pulled her into a tight hug, nuzzling into the warm skin at the base of her neck. “I’m not saying I don’t _want_ you to stay.”

“Better not. Awful early to get tired of me.”

Niko nipped the skin under her mouth, then jerked her hips back to avoid Mel’s retributive swat. They spent some time rumpling the sheets of the previously neatly-made bed, and then Mel had to head out to work.

After sleeping on it, Jada had decided to go ahead and have Niko arrange the meeting, once enough time had passed that the investigator could’ve reasonably tracked her down. The usually borderline stoic whitelighter-witch had been obviously thrown for a loop by the request, and she’d confided in NIko that she’d made the decision after seeing how the sisters’ lack of closure with their mother affected them.

So while that was on the backburner, Niko used the afternoon to comb through ornithological websites in search of the brown bird that had visited her earlier. It took hours, and there was maybe a forty-five minute period where she was convinced it was a kiwi, but those didn’t fly, so neither did that breed identification. Eventually, she settled on something called a flufftail, a female judging by the color, native to central and southern Africa. Definitely not a Michiganite, and judging by the limited information she could find before hitting paywalls, not naturally as big as the one she’d seen. Just the possibility made her heart thrum with an unknown feeling—not unlike the ethereal moment she’d set eyes on another lesbian for the first time, at least the first time where she could register that thought. Camaraderie. Another were, perhaps?

Mindful of the Charmed Ones’ hawkish focus on her eating habits, Niko ate three frozen pizzas for dinner, and then went to change into her “security” gear: black shirt, black jeans, black boots, and a utility belt for the pepper spray and taser they’d provide at the event.

With a couple hours until she needed to be at the venue, her phone started lighting up with texts:

> 6:36 pm Mel: DEMON AT ACAPELLA NIGHT
> 
> 6:36 pm Mel: It’s the vocal coach
> 
> 6:36 pm Mel: I’m on my way there
> 
> 6:37 pm Mel: Prudence Auditorium, if you wanna tag along

A series of explosion, fighting, and bear emojis followed. Niko checked the time, and then headed downstairs to the basement. As she flipped on the blue-white lights, Heimdall’s Sword glinted invitingly from its spot in the middle of the room. This exercise had become surprisingly familiar, and she no longer felt the need to throw out some cheesy line beforehand like, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

But it was still pretty fucking cool to twist a sword and instantly transport to the place in her mind—the back of Prudence Auditorium, where she’d made out with fellow students (including three (3) Hilltones) in undergrad, usually after a show. Pulling from her bear strength, Niko shoved open the emergency door to find Galvin Burdette, Macy’s beefy, maybe-kinda-not-really-boyfriend, standing frozen under the catwalks behind the stage.

From up above, the sisters were yelling a spell: _“Tonde daimon amaroun, hos tane psychane hairein.”_

She was surprisingly late to the party for having teleported to the scene, but the fight wasn’t quite over yet. Apparently the spell didn’t work, and finally, _finally,_ she heard the sisters having The Talk they’d been avoiding. At some point the demon must’ve broken the freeze, because a huge metal light _thunked_ into something, and then flipped over the railing of the catwalk. Niko extended an arm up, up, and kept going, until the bear swiped the wayward stage piece away from hitting Galvin, still frozen to the spot.

_“Tonde daimon amaroun, hos tane psychane hairein.”_

Nothing happened again, and this time she could hear Macy talking: “...I guess I’m still a little peeved that you both blamed me for not handling the dad news perfectly. And I am sorry if I said something that hurt you.”

After a quick few words from Maggie, something must have clicked, because the demon made a terrible screeching noise after the third iteration of the spell, and a cloud of green-black smoke floated down from the catwalk as Galvin came unfrozen.

“Fucking shit— _BEAR!”_ Galvin leapt away from Niko, still a towering eight-foot bear, and she immediately shifted back to her human form. “What the Hell?”

“You couldn’t give a sister a little warning?” Niko yelled up to the catwalk, arms out in question.

“It’s okay, both of you—I’ll explain later,” Macy called from above. She tossed something that looked like Peter Pan’s flute down to Galvin. “Play the Devil’s Tritone. Release the souls.”

Though looking apprehensive, he played the notes, and golden light burst out of the instrument before it sucked the black-green demon into its reeds, and then everything stilled. Galvin looked at Niko, jaw slack, and then up at the sisters again. “Yo, did… did I just vanquish my first demon?”

“Affirmative,” answered Macy with a grin.

They sent the very confused music director home, and Maggie went with the Hilltones to celebrate, while Galvin seemed to whisper something of interest in Macy’s ear before they took their leave.

Outside the auditorium, Niko and Mel stopped to talk at Mel’s car; the Jake Owen show was close enough that the investigator still had time to walk.

“I feel… _so_ much better,” sighed Mel, tugging on the front of Niko’s coat as she leaned back against her car. “And all it took was a demon trying to kill a couple hundred people.”

Grinning, Niko allowed herself to be pulled forward until her hips were resting against the witch’s. “I’m glad.”

“Macy found all these love letters between Dexter and Mom, right up until the month before he died. She hasn’t read all of them yet, but it’s pretty obvious Mom was always in love with him. There has to be a reason she put herself through that pain. Something about keeping Macy and her dad safe.” Mel swallowed, looking suddenly hesitant.

The taller woman nodded as she took one of Mel’s hands and squeezed. “Too close to home?”

“Yeah, I just…” The witch shrugged, the gesture seemingly more for herself. “When I look at the things _we’ve_ done since our powers were unbound, and why—the stakes for Mom were just as high. I have to keep believing it was for love, too.”

Niko hooked a finger under Mel’s chin and drew her in for a kiss, smiling into it as small hands dropped to squeeze her hips. “I gotta go.”

“You just take these gigs because you like throwing people.” Mel stuck out her bottom lip.

“I’ll never admit that out loud,” replied the were in a singsong voice, reluctantly pulling away to backpedal towards the sidewalk.

“Be nice to the country kids,” warned the witch with a playful roll of her dark eyes. “Love you.”

Niko smiled as her heart gave a happy little thump, no less this time than the first time(s) she’d heard those words. “Love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some installments of this series may focus more heavily on the episode content than others, which might just reference an episode for timeframe and the mood of the other characters. We will primarily be seeing things through either Mel or Niko's POV, maybe other characters at times.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading, I am trying to keep myself busy during this multi-episode desert of Niko canon, let me know what you think!


	2. You're Dead to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Vera-Vaughn Manor looking worse for wear after Cyd's sonic energy attacks, the Charmed Ones call upon their friends to help put it back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. One thing I wish we had more of on the show: Big ensemble scenes. Every portion of the show seems really partitioned off from the other, and I just want to see the gang banter all together in some sitcom-esque situation.
> 
> Also me: Damn writing big ensemble scenes is fucken hard.

“Oh.” The scene was much worse than she’d expected, somehow.

From behind Niko, Maggie gave a little snort of a chuckle.

“Yeah, it’s… Look, we, uh, did our best,” replied Macy, hands on hips as she surveyed the damage to Vera-Vaughn Manor alongside the investigator. “That’s why we had to call in the cavalry.”

Niko twisted her shoulders to find Harry, who was delicately standing on what used to be part of a bookcase.

“Magical damage… human repair, at least in the case of Cyd’s particular talent. She’s quite the sorceress.” With his mouth pressed into a thin line, Harry shrugged. “Can’t say it will be the last time something like this happens.”

“Shame. This is a historical building,” called Jada from the sun room, where at least only the potted plants had become collateral damage.

It’d been easy enough to repair the damage Macy caused with her telekinetic attacks, like the Cyd-sized hole in the windows, but the places where Cyd’s energy bombs had torn apart the very matter of the house… Those spots were being stubborn. Specifically, the fire damage behind the kitchen sink, the spot where Cyd had Kool-Aid Man’d the wall, and four nearly-obliterated cabinets.

“Your door is _right here_ ,” complained Galvin as he stood in the hole in the wall next to the garage door leading into the kitchen. “This is just… rude.”

From across the room, Macy flashed him a brilliant smile that Niko easily noticed made Harry wince. “Well, she _did_ think that we were harboring an evil trickster who knowingly turned her husband into a demon, so.”

“Okay,” interrupted the whitelighter after loudly clearing his throat. “Niko, Jada—cabinets? Galvin, er—hole.”

 _Smooth_. Niko clapped Harry on the back a smidge harder than she’d intended, making him lurch forward, and fist-bumped Jada as she joined them in the kitchen. Compared to the trouble they’d gone through to assemble the safehouse, cleaning up some walls and hanging new cabinets would be a breeze. Because the cabinets were custom-made to comply with historical building codes in Hilltowne, Marisol had had extra sections stored out in the shed in case of… well, probably something magical like this, whether or not anyone else knew it at the time. She had to admire the forethought.

While Macy, Harry, and Galvin got started patching the exterior wall, which included replacing some wiring that luckily only connected to the basement, Maggie more or less hovered around Niko and Jada as they started the process of cleaning the empty spot on the wall.

It was solitary work at first, and Niko popped one headphone in to listen to her “background beats” playlist with one ear while maybe listening to Macy’s conversations with the other. Besides finding out that she was potentially about to turn into a demon, with no clear timeline, the poor eldest sister was being subjected to attempting a group project with her dueling suitors. Macy would have probably thrown her into the yard if she caught her putting it that way out loud.

“I just think it’s a bad idea for you to run with this idea, at least not without more backup,” Harry was saying as they used hammers and crowbars to remove weakened parts of the remaining wall.

“Sure, it’s probably gonna be dangerous.” Galvin jerked his head back as a small rush of dust fell from above him. “Macy, what do you think, you wanna be my backup muscle on a beautiful island adventure?”

 _Backfired. Poor Harry._ Niko dared spare a glance over at the three, and if possible, the whitelighter looked paler than usual. Macy, for her part, was just smiling to herself as she worked.

As their conversation tapered off, the were considered her two companions and remembered Maggie’s own recent romantic developments, but they hadn’t had a chance to talk more about that since the Maestro’s shenanigans. But no sooner had Niko casually asked, “How’s Parker?” before Jada gave her a solid elbow in the side, hard enough that a human would’ve doubled over, but for a werebear, just hard enough to knock some of the air from her lungs.

“It’s fine, Jada,” sighed Maggie, but she nonetheless looked mildly pleased with the whitelighter-witch’s protective reaction. “I found out he’s a demon. Half-demon, but. He’s a demon. He’s known who I was since we met.”

That gave Niko pause, and she put down her sanding block to meet Maggie’s light brown eyes. “So… Macy is an almost-demon, and Parker is… a half-demon.”

“Accurate. And you’re a bear.” The empath groaned and threw herself onto a dusty chair. “This is some Twilight shit.”

“You weren’t enough old enough for Twilight,” teased Jada. “Read it for one of your classes?”

“I watched the movies.”

Niko smirked and tossed a sheet of sandpaper to the youngest Vera. “That makes me Taylor Lautner, right?”

Other than a trademark scoff, Maggie didn’t respond to that, and the three of them set about the task in earnest. They smoothed down the walls where the energy blasts had hit, then filled in the broken and cracked spots with quick-drying compound, until it was all an even surface again. They painted the bits that would show around the new cabinetry, and then had to wait for it to dry.

“So… does that mean things are over with you and Parker?” prodded Niko as they sipped water at the kitchen island.

While Jada, in her usual imperturbable manner, barely had drywall dust on her black shirt, Maggie’s clothes and skin were a patchwork of paint and smudges of the compound. “I don’t know. We talked the other day, and… It’ll take awhile to figure out how to trust him again.”

A sharp _thunk_ and a string of expletives caught their attention, and Niko looked over to see Macy swinging a hand around. Harry’s horrified expression and the hammer in his hand made it easy to determine what happened.

“Tag out, tag out,” hissed the telekinetic, walking away from the two men.

“I got it.” Jada jogged over to replace her, shouldering into the framing lumber that had been jostled out of place by the wayward strike.

“Are you bleeding?” called Harry as Macy moved to the kitchen island.

“No, just… ow.”

Niko grabbed a bag of broccoli out of the freezer and handed it to Maggie, who wrapped it in a clean rag before giving the impromptu cold pack to her oldest sister for her reddening thumb.

“This is going to be a long day,” sighed the telekinetic, offering the best smile she could manage, which for Macy, was still miles beyond what most people could express on their sunniest days.

Waiting until their eyes met, Maggie winked and gave Niko a smirk. “Maybe we need more butch friends.”

The werebear easily shot back with, “You could always invite Perry—“

“No!” groaned both sisters.

 

* * *

 

After having spent an unplanned day and a half in the United Kingdom, Mel returned to a somewhat off-kilter sleep schedule and a backlog of papers she needed to grade for her newly acquired adjunct professorship. It didn’t pay enough to quit The Haunt completely, but it was a step in the right direction. She had had two classes that afternoon, and then stayed for a few hours in the adjunct lounge, a less good version of the tenure lounge, and the worst when you added the student lounge to the mix, to catch up on grading.

Once the results had been keyed into the course portal, she finally packed up to head home. It wasn’t until she got to her street and saw some familiar cars out front that she remembered Macy had organized a Kitchen Cleanup day. She was a little sad to have not met Cyd, for no other reason than she was another witch, though Mel was certainly impressed by the damage her powers had done in such a short time.

When the front door swung into the house, she heard voices and hammer falls from the kitchen. Mel toed off her shoes and went upstairs to change into “okay to ruin” clothes before padding into the dining room. Pausing there, her eyes inevitably sought out and found Niko, registering the other guests, but unable to focus on anything but _her._ The tall investigator was wearing a black t-shirt and khaki carpenter pants, currently leaning against the island with Macy, watching the others work and chatting while they sipped water.

“...don’t know when it’s going to happen. Tomorrow? In ten years?” Macy was saying, shaking her head.

“It’s this big looming thundercloud, and there’s nothing to do but wait.” Niko sighed as she put her cup down. “What happens to a senile werebear? Will I be able to control it?”

“And at what point do we have to make… alternative plans?” finished Macy as Niko nodded solemnly. “To keep people we love safe? From us?”

The investigator offered an outstretched arm, and Macy accepted the side-hug with a long sigh. “When I didn’t know who the three of you were… It was you that kept me in the Vera-Vaughn corner. I trusted you from the moment we met, because you just exude _good._ The demon couldn’t have a more challenging enemy than you. Fuck that demon.”

As Macy let out a choked laugh, Mel’s chest constricted with a rush of affection for her werebear, and she cleared her throat to announce her presence.

“Welcome back, lassie,” greeted Jada from where she’d been using her lightning to check the new wall wiring. “Fun trip?”

“Ha, ha. You guys made good progress.” The time witch nodded to the sink, the singed curtains and burnt windows had been replaced, and Galvin and Maggie were marking out the spot for the final cabinet replacement.

“With only minor injuries,” added Macy, holding up her cold-packed hand.

“This last cabinet will be easy with you here.” Maggie stepped away from the empty space to examine her pencil marks. “Can you freeze it in place?”

Of course she could, and Mel moved over to the spot as Niko effortly lifted the last cabinet from the ground. When the investigator had it in place, Mel threw her freeze, and they moved out of the way for Galvin to quickly drill it into the studs. When she let go, it didn’t budge. Her power came in handy for attaching the new sheets of drywall to close off the reinstalled wiring, and once it had been sealed with joint compound, they just needed to wait for that to dry to sand and paint. While Mel, Galvin, and Jada finished that part up, the others swept and scrubbed the sun room of dirt and smashed planter pots.

By the time there was nothing left to do, they were well into the evening of a full day’s work. The friends stepped back to admire the almost-redone kitchen.

“Okay, next time, Mel has to be here,” said Galvin after the appreciative silence dragged into the realm of allowing the exertion of the day to creep into their bones. “This would’ve taken half the time.”

“Builds character,” retorted Jada teasingly, hands on hips. “Not saying that I won’t be complaining about it tomorrow. But I believe you witches said something about pizza and beer in payment?”

“Already on its way,” confirmed Maggie with a wave of her phone. “Including three large Niko specials.”

Glancing over at the were, Mel grinned as their eyes met. The Niko Special was a favorite of the bear—a six-cheese with chopped _bitter melon_ on top—and only available via their local pie shop, and the workers had long ago given up acting surprised at the order, though they wouldn’t be putting it on their pre-selected menu anytime soon.

While Macy broke out veggies and dip for the wait on their pizza, Mel noticed Niko nod her head towards the back door and followed her outside. The taller woman clicked on the string lights, bathing the stone patio area in a warm amber glow, and turned back to the time witch with a crooked smile—and Spirits, if Mel’s heart didn’t still stutter at the way Niko looked at her. Not he heated urgency in the dark of a bedroom, but like this, when they simply hadn’t seen each other in a day or two, or sometimes just in quiet moments together when she looked up from a book to find the investigator's dark brown eyes watching her from across the room.

“I got you something,” she murmured as Niko stepped closer. “From ‘across the pond.’”

The were raised an eyebrow in question, and Mel retreated inside for her coat. From the inner pocket, she produced a black silk drawstring bag that initially made those eyebrows shoot to Niko’s hairline, and she laughed. “Not that kind of gift.”

Gingerly accepting it, Niko shook loose the string and carefully pulled out the contents—a silver pocket watch. The investigator’s jaw dropped open as she turned it over in her hands, thumb brushing over the silver bear traced in delicate metal filigree on the otherwise transparent cover. Inside, it had a simple cream colored face with black roman numerals, and in the middle, the Charmed Ones symbol, inlaid in silver, bracketed the center of the clock hands.

“Oh shit,” breathed the tall woman as she closed the watch and slipped it back into its soft bag. “Th-this is incredible. Thank you.”

“It’s enchanted, too, of course.” Mel smiled and melted against Niko’s front as she draped slender arms around the witch’s waist. “I did it myself. If you press the button three times, it’ll freeze everyone within a few feet of you for two seconds. For whatever emergency.”

“I don’t doubt I’ll need it, I—“ Niko cut off and snapped her head to one side, wrenching a hand up to point at a nearby tree. “Mel, that bird—freeze it!”

In the split second it took her to spot it, the bird took flight, but Mel reflexively threw her freeze anyway, and its wings stopped just before it dropped like a cannonball.

Niko had been moving towards the tree before the freeze even hit, and she shifted into her bear form to slide across the ground, a big and soft enough of a target that the bird plopped onto her back and rolled unharmed to the ground. Shifting back, the investigator sprang to her feet and grabbed the hawk-sized bird by the feet and and beak.

“What the—“

“This thing has been following me. I think it’s a were. Let it go, please?”

Although still trying to process the idea of a werebird, Mel did release her hold, and the thing made a terrible droning noise as it struggled in Niko’s grip.

“Stop, stop,” she was saying, ducking to avoid the flap of its wings. “I’m not gonna hurt you. Show me who you are.”

An agonizing moment of uncertainty, and then Niko wasn’t holding a bird anymore—the human form of a woman sprung down, knocking away her hands, and Mel froze her in a panic. “You were right. This is—do you think she’s been hunting you?”

“Wait no, let me—can I talk to her? I don’t think she’s trying to hurt me. She said something to me the other day, in the attic.”

“You didn’t mention—”

“I know, and I should have, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Please, Mel. This is…” Niko sighed, looking almost frantic as her hands moved up and down, clearly trying not to touch the woman’s outstretched arms. “I’ve never met another were before, at least not one that didn’t make me. Please.”

The time witch considered the stranger, whose frozen body language admittedly didn’t seem threatening. She was stocky and tall, even a head taller than Niko, with black hair in short, tight curls and mahogany skin. But her mouth was quirked in an excited smile, like the kind a kid makes in viral videos about being told they’re on their way to Disneyland, and her eyes twinkled in the dim light, fixed on Niko. Mel took a deep breath and released her freeze again.

“Bear!” the woman greeted brightly, pulling Niko into a tight hug. “You scared me.”

“I could say the same for you, uh…?”

“Naledi.”

“Naledi. I’m Niko.” The investigator finally wriggled herself free of the hug, and she stood at arms’ length from the woman even as she smiled back at her. “Why have you been following me?”

“We heard you killed the first of our lines. We had to meet you.”

Brows furrowing, Niko glanced at Mel, who tried to put on her best _proceed with caution_ expression. “Who’s we?”

“Our den, of weres. Hilltowne is in our range.”

 _Uh oh._ Mel uncrossed her arms, sensing danger, but she was fairly certain this was going to happen no matter what she did—

“So we’re really excited to have you,” finished Naledi. “We just wanted to see what kind of person you are before inviting you home.”

“Home?”

“Yeah. If you’re going to live here, you have to be part of our den. Sorry, witch.” The werebird waved at her enthusiastically, either intentionally ignoring the rising tension or otherwise convinced that what she’d just said wasn’t incredibly ominous.

“I’m part of Mel’s coven already.” Niko shuffled another half-step backwards from the woman, a growl rumbling from deep in her chest. “So join the den or else… what?”

“Oh.” Immediately, Naledi’s face fell, and she looked almost confused. Mel decided it had been the latter scenario keeping her demeanor so positive earlier. “Well, then our alpha would send the predators, and you’d have a choice: Leave Hilltowne, or perish.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been an intriguing/frustrating challenge to try to pace my divergent plot with the pace of the show's major plot reveals, to say the least.
> 
> :: straightens utility belt :: Listen I can't guarantee that I won't up the rating for later episodes in this series.


	3. Manic Pixie Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Charmed Ones track an unknown threat targeting filmbros. Jada attends the meet with her parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading/kudos!!
> 
> I really enjoyed this episode and wouldn't dream of changing anything about Harry's scenes under the influence of pixie dust, so most of the action occurs post-episode and surrounding Jada's meet. What happens when she goes to see her parents, but Mel isn't there with her? (Also, why did we get zero action from that scene in the show?!)

It had been a long time since Niko had really dressed up, at least in something more than a pair of dark jeans and a button-down for occasional visits to government offices or with clients. And her divorce lawyer.

Despite the trouble the sisters gave her about eating enough, her tweed suit fit exactly how she remembered, and she just hoped it would give her the little bit of extra air of authority to get close to the scene. Having been scrolling through Facebook while the student had livestreamed his tragic jump from a campus building, Niko immediately donned the outfit and headed into town.

Her ex-partner, Jimmy Morris, had been in the background of some of the breaking news coverage, but she would need to get to him to find out more. While Niko thankfully hadn’t seen the footage herself, the little wisp of light at the end of the stream had struck up immediate online chatter, and Niko was beyond the point of trying to rationalize things like that as anything but a likely precursor to a new magical challenge. Like the bird in the attic window. She hadn’t even texted the sisters before heading down, but did manage to send a group chat notification when she pulled up and parked a little ways down the street, on the off chance that any of them would be awake.

It helped that Zelda was on duty that night, getting her as far as the crime scene tape, but the CSI couldn’t exactly duck her into the restricted area, and that was where she was banking on her history with the HPD.

She let out a quick, two-note whistle, the one she and Morris used as their sort of “secret code” to keep track of each other in the field, and a smile reflexively took over her face when his head automatically jerked up, as if not a day had passed since they were partners.

“Hamada?” he called, walking towards her cautiously. “Well, fuck me. What’re you doing here?”

“Feeling nostalgic,” she lied with a brightness that belied how sick it made her feel. Quitting the force had definitely been the right choice. Doing this every day wouldn’t have been tenable. “May I?”

“Ah, well…” Morris made a helpless sort of noise, and Niko’s gut twisted with guilt. “I don’t know…”

“I have my PI license. Walk through, maybe help?”

“Actually, it’s pretty open and shut. Poor kids jumped. Heard it’s all online. We’ll let the ME call it once the tox results are back.” After another half-second of inner turmoil, he shrugged and lifted the tape in invitation. “Only found the boy so far.”

A few unis milling around waved at her as she passed, but it was a mostly quiet scene. After pulling him from the river, they’d set up a field curtain around the kid’s body, which was also covered in a black tarp, to shield him from gawkers and news cameras. Halfway across the restricted zone, Niko’s phone buzzed, and she checked the text message on her watch.

> 4:11 am Mel: I’m watching

The exact meaning of the simple two words didn’t register for a few seconds, bringing her to a confused halt, and then another message popped up.

> 4:11 am Mel: I see you ironed your green shirt

Ah. The grand bargain. She realized that her line of sight was fixed on her wrist, where her green shirt was indeed peeking out from her coat. When Niko had committed to the Vera-Vaughn witches to receive the protection of their coven, she’d traded in several key privacy rights, including giving her witches easy access to her mind and sight. This was the first time it’d happened, and she was somewhat discomfited that she couldn’t feel the extra presence behind her eyes.

“Everything okay?”

Niko looked up from her watch to Morris, who was standing near the dead man’s head. “Yeah, sorry. Client.”

Seeming to accept that, Morris handed her a plastic glove as she approached. Niko snapped it into place with a pang of real nostalgia, and then squatted to lift the corner of the tarp. The poor kid’s face was mangled and swollen from being in the river, his chest a mess of ripped clothing and broken skin. It made her throat tighten, but not before her nose and mouth filled with the smell of magic, something overwhelming and _bright,_ like biting into a lemon wedge. Her eyes watered from the intensity of it, and she dropped the stiff fabric. This marked the first death of a civilian since the wolves had killed three in their quest for the Charmed Ones, and she was abruptly reminded of the high stakes, higher even than her own personal safety. This kid’s parents, or grandparents, or foster parents— _someone_ was going to get one of the worst phone calls of their life tonight.

“I heard some people saw them jump on livestream?”

“Yeah, one of the techs mentioned that. Coupla classmates. Didn’t even call 911, thought it was special effects or something.”

Although he didn’t gesture to said livestream witnesses, Niko could easily follow Morris’ eyes to the two young men talking to news crews near the edge of the scene, and she let her gaze linger on them to make sure the watching witch got a good look.

“Anyway, that’s about it. Up on the roof, looks like a romantic picnic. No signs of a fight or struggle.”

_Hmm._ Briefly, she considered asking to see, but knew logically that that would be seen as odd when this was, to human eyes, a fairly clear case of death by suicide.

“Twenty-two years old,” sighed Morris. “Fucking shame.”

After a minute or two of friendly catching up, Morris had to get back to his shift, and Niko ducked under the tape with a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Her first instinct was to go to the Manor, but… Mel had just watched and heard all of that, if not her sisters, too. They could _still_ be watching. Sitting in her car with two hands tight on the wheel, the cabin air suddenly felt stifling hot in her lungs, the walls wobbling towards her. She wrenched a hand free and called her girlfriend, trying to keep her panting breaths quiet.

“Babe?” Mel answered, the sweetness of her tone contrasting harshly with the panic in Niko’s chest. “Babe, everything okay?”

“Are you still in my head?”

“In your—no, I broke the connection when you left. Macy, too.”

Niko dropped her head against the seat. That didn’t make her feel better.

“Niko? What’s wrong?”

“Well, you saw what happened. I’m gonna go get some sleep. Let me know if you need me.”

“Niko—“

She ended the call, smashing the button so hard the screen cracked, and that was just the perfect cherry on top, or perhaps more accurately a straw to break the camel’s back. With a surge of the bear’s power, she snapped the device in half and dropped the pieces in the passenger seat.

It wasn’t until she pulled back into the driveway of the safehouse, the sun’s imminent rise casting a gray-blue hue over the forest, that she calmed down enough for the guilt to start. She shouldn’t have hung up on Mel. She shouldn’t have broken her phone like a child.

The inner self-flagellation kept going until she walked into the living room to find Jada waiting for her, eyebrows raised in a knowing expression.

“Did you do something bad?” said the whitelighter-witch in lieu of a greeting.

Niko held up the two halves of her phone.

“Did you do that before, or after, you hung up on your high strung girlfriend?”

“She called you?”

“Asked me to make sure you’re okay. Apparently, it couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour of the morning.”

“I’m sorry, man.” Sighing, the were paced further into the living room to drop on the couch with Jada. “I’m fine. You can go back to sleep.”

“Uh huh.” Jada pinned her with an incredulous look. “I’m your friend, Hamada. This is your chance to unpack whatever’s got you all frowny facey.”

It was a good point. Even though her body ached for sleep, her mind had taken hold of a deeply unsettled feeling that wouldn’t just go away. She was adult enough to know that about herself now. So, the were relented and explained what had happened at the scene. Her reflection on the drive over had also kicked up her guilt about misleading Morris and about a young man whose end would be lost in a lie.

Leaning back against the couch cushions, Jada nodded to herself as she considered her response. Her green eyes seemed almost sad when they looked back at her.

“Maybe I’m just tired. I meant it when I said I trusted them, and this was a time when it made sense—“

“No, don’t do that. You feel what you feel,” interrupted Jada coolly. “I get it. When I joined the S’Arcana, I didn’t know empaths were a thing until six months of them reading my thoughts. I almost left, I was so mad.”

Before Niko could reply, her stomach rumbled loudly, and they moved into the kitchen to continue the conversation, Jada cutting up a giant bowl of fruit and Niko mixing the waffle batter while a tray of bacon went in the oven.

“I will say one thing for the Elders’ rules: a lot of them are rooted in protecting boundaries, more so than bodies,” continued the whitelighter-witch, sounding wistful. “Love potions, truth serums, mind erasure spells—heavy stuff, if you think about it enough and you care about consent.”

The were nodded along as she poured the first cup of batter into the Mickey Mouse waffle mold Macy had given her as a housewarming gift.

“You never get used to it, but… there’s a level of acceptance. You do what you can to protect yourself, hold people accountable for the rest.” The whitelighter-witch paused, and then added: “Not your phone, though. You worry people. And then they call me.”

“That’s fair,” sighed Niko, glancing over while her friend as the waffle timer counted down. “I broke the screen by accident, and then I just lost my cool.”

“Eat, I’ll fix your phone, and then you call and give that nice big explanation to Mel. Deal?”

 

* * *

 

By the time Mel noticed her missed call from Niko, who Jada had assured her in a text message was fine, she was halfway into an hourlong class, covering for a fellow professor. That section of the course was much further in the syllabus than Mel’s, a situation which she handled beautifully if she did say so herself, but it left her flustered—and she completely forgot about it.

Harry suspected the bright light next to the death of two young people signaled a hobgoblin, but they needed more information, a sighting, _something_ that would let them know how to deal with whatever had done this. So they piled themselves into The Haunt for a presentation of the late Judd’s final film.

While Macy and Maggie went to talk to the mustachio’d livestream witness, Mel went to the bar, nearly startling when she realized Zelda was sitting there, human form, wearing a flowing green cardigan and ridiculously wide hat.

“Mel,” she greeted, sliding what smelled like a vodka sprite over to her.

“What’re you doing here?”

“I knew Judd. He was okay, compared to some of these guys.”

The witch sipped her drink, thankful the spirit hadn’t filled it with salt or something like that, as her eyes swept the crowd.

“You witches think something else happened?”

“Maybe. What did you know about him? Or the woman?”

“Chloe.” The kitsune tilted her head, thinking. “She was dating this other guy before Judd—Peter. He dropped the film class all these guys are taking.”

“So she was like a film student groupie? Did she take this class with those guys, too?”

“She wasn’t a student. I think she was a dog walker?” Zelda’s brow furrowed. “Or wait, she owned a cupcake shop, and she made her own candles. No one knew her that well.”

Mel tapped her fingers on her glass as she watched her sisters talk to the witness. Chloe certainly sounded suspicious, but until they found her body, she was also a literal dead end.

As she pondered whether she could truly stomach a conversation with one of the possible fedora-wearing hobgoblins, Maggie appeared out of the crowd next to them. Surprised, she first greeted Zelda with an enthusiastic hug, and then apologized, saying they needed to go.

That was about when the whole bar heard the screech of car brakes and a scream.

The snarled form of the witness in the street stopped Mel in her tracks just a couple feet outside The Haunt, and she saw a gold orb float off into the sky, like what people said they saw on the livestream. Macy and Maggie were saying something, Harry weighing in, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the blood puddle growing under the young man’s body. It wasn’t until someone pushed her aside, yelling about calling 9–1-1, that Mel formed a coherent thought: _We have to get out of here._

“Macy,” she hissed, stumbling forward as more people rushed out of the bar. Her sister was gathering something into a vial from the ground. “Harry, we have to leave. Right now, before the cops show up.”

They walked as casually and quickly as they could around the side of The Haunt, and then to the deserted back door, where Harry apparated them back home.

 

* * *

 

When Mel called back in late evening, Niko was dozing on the couch, a scroll half-unrolled on her chest. Startled, she rolled completely off of the cushions, bashing her hip on the coffee table and missing the call while cursing all of God’s creations on the floor. She hadn’t quite finished telling Jesus what he could do to his mother when a hesitant knock sounded at the front door.

“Niko?” called Maggie’s voice.

“One second,” the investigator shouted back, groaning as she pushed herself up to her knees.

A tiny scratching noise came from the door, Maggie’s key in the lock, and then it swung open to reveal the two younger Charmed Ones and a brunette Niko didn’t recognize. Maggie’s eyes widened a she stepped into the safehouse, noticing the were still halfway on the floor. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Just fell.” Trying to look nonchalant now that there was a stranger present, Niko got to her feet and brushed off her jeans.

“This is Chloe.”

“Chloe, the pixie?”

“I suppose. _A_ pixie,” replied the brunette, nose wrinkling endearingly with her wide smile as she shook Niko’s hand, hesitant. “I’m sure you’ve heard some things…”

“I’ll explain everything,” interrupted Mel as she closed the front door behind them. “Maggie, can you get Chloe situated upstairs?”

The empath knowingly slid her eyes between her sister and Niko, but then nodded and led the pixie away.

Niko watched Mel shift uncomfortably for a couple seconds, obviously trying to come up with something to say. Her hurt feelings had abated enough over the day that she took pity and gestured to the couch, sitting back down and patting the spot next to her. “Hi, babe.”

“Hi,” returned Mel as she settled next to her, eyes on her hands. “So, the Sight.”

“The Sight.”

The time witch looked up as Niko grabbed one of her anxiously wriggling hands. “I’m sorry. We should have asked.”

“I suppose in emergencies, it’s different, but… It did freak me out. Knowing it’s an option and living it are two very different things.”

“I promise I won’t… ever _abuse_ it. And you know Macy and Maggie won’t either. But I can’t guarantee that other magical things are ever going to be respectful about that sort of thing.”

Niko nodded, gently massaging the shorter woman’s palm with both hands. Like a switch, it made Mel relax a little. “I’m sorry for hanging up on you, that wasn’t okay, either.”

The conversation tapered off as Niko’s massage travelled up Mel’s wrist and forearm, until the sound of Maggie coming back down the stairs made them both look up.

“All better now?” teased the youngest sister, grabbing her coat from the rack by the door. Something on their faces must have answered her question, because without waiting, she added: “Let me guess, you’re staying here tonight?”

“I’ll help Chloe summon her sisters tomorrow,” was all Mel had to say, but she flashed Maggie a grateful smile.

 

* * *

 

“More sisters?” asked Niko when the door closed.

“We’re gonna unionize the pixies. That little acorn around her neck, that’s her heart, and if someone takes it, they can force her to use her magic to do things like kill Judd and Noah. Pixies are actually supposed to be one of the most wholesome magical creatures.”

“So she wasn’t behind all of that?”

“No. Just another mediocre man getting rid of the competition because he can’t handle not being top mediocre white man.”

Niko’s fingers stilled on her upper arm, and a low growl rumbled deep enough that Mel felt it through her hand. When she looked up, though, the investigator just seemed crestfallen.

“What’s wrong?

“I guess I just…” Niko huffed and tugged on Mel’s elbow, and the witch relaxed, letting the taller woman pull her into her lap, legs across hers. “Besides all of the institutional horror of course, the main thing that bothered me about being a cop was just… I always showed up when someone was already dead. Even when on patrol answering 911 calls, something bad had already happened by the time it came to that call. I had this idea that magic would be different.”

The look on the investigator’s face was part defeat, part anger, and Mel smoothed her hands along her shoulders, up her neck, and then scratched blunt nails through Niko's hair until her brow softened, some of the tension melting out of her muscles. “We’re _all_ still really new at this. Magic, demons, bears. We’re chasing our tails now, but… We won’t let Hilltowne turn into a hunting ground. There’s a long game.”

Niko nodded, and as her palms massaged along Mel’s thighs, she paused and raised an eyebrow. “What is this?”

“Oh!” Mel raised up on her knees to work the small glass vial out of her pocket. “It’s pixie dust.”

“Like… Tinkerbell?”

“Kind of. You don’t fly, so to speak. I figured, um, it might be worth seeing if it’s something that affects you.”

“What does it do?”

Mel clicked her tongue. “It kind of makes you into a psychotically happy toddler who will do anything a pixie says.”

To her relief, Niko just chuckled at that, grasping the vial and turning it over in her hand. “I guess it’s better to know now. Will you be my trip sitter?”

“Yes,” sighed the witch with a roll of her eyes, taking back the glass container. “Don’t get excited, it’ll only last a few seconds.”

“Dose me.”

Remaining firmly on the investigator’s lap, Mel popped open the cork and removed as tiny of a pinch of the stuff as she could manage, and then puffed it into Niko’s face, which slowly broke into a wide, blissful smile. She saw the taller woman’s eyes flash gold as she closed the vial.

“I guess it works?” Mel cupped Niko’s cheek, watching the way her brown eyes swept side to side lazily in their sockets. “Macy will find this interesting, I’m sure.”

“Macy!” cooed Niko, voice dripping with affection. “I fucking love Macy. She’s the _nicest_ sister. No offense. You know that.”

This was giving her major truth serum flashbacks, but Mel just settled back to listen.

“Like, she bakes, and she’s good at it, and I just like _feel better_ when I get to hang out with her, yanno? That’s my emotional support Macy.” Seemingly subconsciously, Niko’s hands flexed on her legs again, and the investigator looked down with an awed expression. “Do you know how fucking awesome it is that I get to touch these?”

“Okay, okay—“ Mel started to gently cut her off, then she saw Niko blink slowly and give a little head shake. “You back?”

“Not immune, then,” sighed Niko, cheeks reddening. “You, uh… You know that… I also think you are nice. And supportive.”

The witch chuckled and shrugged. “Suuure. Am I just legs to you, Hamada?”

After a brief look of panic, Niko seemed to settle on a response—it turned out to be a swift rise to her feet, effortlessly throwing Mel over a shoulder, and heading towards the stairs with her prize as the witch laughed. “I can think of a couple other things.”

Hours later, the sound of excited bleating dragged Mel out of a warm, floaty sort of dream, and her first thought was that her back was unpleasantly cold. Where there should’ve been a hunky investigator pressed up against her, she rolled over to find empty sheets. Judging by the sun, the morning was well underway, and Mel checked her phone just to orient herself: 8:37. She had a couple worried text messages from Jada about the impending meeting with her parents and spent a few minutes sending back affirmations before rolling out of bed.

Once she’d pulled on sweatpants and one of Niko’s hoodies, the time witch went on the search for said investigator, peeking into the open doorway of Chloe’s room as she passed. The white bedding had been pristinely pulled back into place, decorative pillows looking puffier than they ever had before, as if no one had slept there at all—but no pixie.

She spotted the pixie and the were from the kitchen windows, holding feed buckets in the goat pen as the herd dog, an Anatolian Shepherd named Katrina, circled them worriedly. Naturally, Katrina was not a huge fan of strangers. After a somewhat irritating amount of research, in Mel’s opinion, Niko had settled on a breed of “pygmy” goat, something about fat content in their milk and grazing area—but most importantly for the Vera-Vaughn sisters, they were mind-numbingly cute, and she couldn’t help but watch for a minute as the chunky, floppy-eared herbivores pranced around the two women.

By the time Mel made it downstairs and outside, holding her coat closed around her waist, the goats had finished their supplemental feed and moved on to the fresh hay in piles around their pen. Chloe and Niko were smiling brightly and chatting as they walked back to the gate.

“Good morning, Mel,” greeted the pixie, bouncing a little as she approached. While Niko was smudged with dirt from her boots to her forehead, Chloe was spotless, glowing gold as always, even though she’d just worn a pair of thin Toms. “You didn’t tell me there were _animals_ here! And _baby chickens.”_

“And chores,” sighed the time witch, winking at Niko.

Niko’s grin just widened, and she turned to the pixie. “Katrina will warm up to you, a little bit. Ironically, she likes my bear more than me. I’m hoping it doesn’t extend to real ones.”

Chloe made a tsking noise. “Don’t apologize for Katrina. She is a working woman doing her job well. Are you a werebear? I _thought_ that’s what I felt about you. Something else under the skin, you know?”

“Sure am.”

“Well, let’s see it,” singsonged the pixie, putting down her empty bucket.

Mel grabbed Chloe by the elbow and dragged her back a little bit as Niko shifted, until she towered over them with black eyes and a gold hawk across her chest. The imposing silhouette of the bear still sometimes caught Mel off guard, but the chickens and goats? Barely batted an ear at the bear, which had been an intriguing surprise the first time they tested for the animals’ reaction.

“That. Is. Dope,” Chloe was almost shouting with delight. “Can I touch?”

The bear held out one of its huge paws, and the pixie’s eyes rounded with satisfaction as she dug her fingers into the thick, soft fur along its arm, dragging them up and down as if to savor the feeling.

Katrina’s bark caught their attention, and before Mel, who hadn’t grown up with dogs, could understand the body language, Niko had vaulted over the fencing and was running through the acre-wide pen with the creature. At 120 lbs, Katrina was nothing to sneeze at, but she looked almost miniature in the distance as the bear loped alongside her on all fours, laughing and occasionally stopping to wrestle.

“You really love her.”

Mel shrugged, unsure why that even needed saying. “Yeah. It’s pretty gross, huh?”

Tears were suddenly welling up in the pixie’s eyes, and Mel instinctively reached out a hand to her shoulder in concern. Chloe was shaking her head as she said in a watery voice, “Oh, I’m fine. That is just _so_ sweet, and you have this little secret safety nest… The witch and the were. I can’t even handle it.”

Finally, Mel was beginning to really _get_ the appeal of pixies, in their free state. Her earnest sweetness was a gust of fresh air in their world of demons and other hellish creatures. She looked back out at Niko, the bear flat on its belly as Katrina tugged on one of its round ears with a concerning amount of force. A worry thought popped up then, and she couldn’t stop it from spilling out of her lips, “You haven’t, uh… _dusted_ Niko since you got here, have you?”

“Nope,” replied the pixie without hesitation. “This is all you, Mel.”

Later, the three of them were just finishing up breakfast inside when Mel’s phone chirped with a text message, and it made her freeze mid-stride in the living room.

> 10:22 am Jada: 911

A high-pitched ringing started in her ears, and her worry must have shown on her face, because Niko and Chloe were giving her questioning looks. “Niko, something’s wrong. We have to find Jada. Chloe, you’ll be safe here. Stay inside while we’re gone.”

With Mel still in sweats and Niko covered in muck, they ran downstairs and teleported to the location, a local business park.

Two things registered immediately. First, in front of them, a bunch of people dressed in red and black, faces hidden, were standing near a black panel van. Second, those hooded figures were holding _crossbows._ That was as far as she got before bolts were sailing towards them, and she threw her freeze, but nothing happened—they just kept coming.

Pain registered in her side as she hit the ground, and for a moment she thought she’d been hit, until another bolt zipped overhead. She’d been shoved aside by a hulking bear that took two of the projectiles in the back. The bear roared and turned, ripping both arrows from its flesh with its teeth, but the attackers were reloading.

“Niko! Mel!”

Mel’s head whipped around in search of Jada’s voice, and then she spotted the whitelighter-witch crouched behind a car, a crossbow bolt of her own embedded in her shoulder. Panting, she stumbled to her feet and sprinted towards her friend, shouting for Niko to follow over her shoulder.

_“Fuck,_ are you okay?” she gasped as she slid down next to Jada, examining the wound. It was embedded deep in the flesh, worryingly close to the tendons and ligaments that attached the arm and shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah—Mel, Niko’s a _huge_ target. Get her over here. She’ll never make it to them straight on,” panted the whitelighter-witch, her eyes glowing white-blue. “These guys have a protection charm. My lightning isn’t phasing them.”

“My freeze, either.” Mel looked back, simultaneously horrified and irritated to find her stupid, brave bear still standing in the street, shuffling sideways in their general direction while keeping an eye on the attackers. She cupped both hands around her mouth to yell: “Niko Hamada, _surface area!”_

The hooded figures loosed another round of bolts, and Mel held her breath. They sailed straight for their target, but the sound of impact—metal into flesh—never came. With milliseconds to spare, Niko had shifted back to human form and hit the ground, allowing the arrows to fly harmlessly past her. Then she finally scrambled over to the witches, her face tight with pain.

_Pain?_ Mel checked the investigator’s back where the arrows had hit, thankfully on the broad, hard muscle and bone of her shoulder, but where there should’ve been healing wounds, instead she saw open, torn flesh leaking bright blood. “It’s not healing.”

“I’m fine,” huffed Niko, checking Jada’s bolt wound. “How do we get around these guys?”

“I can teleport us behind them, but I needed backup,” replied Jada with a wince. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

They clasped hands, and with a flash of blue, Mel’s feet hit the ground near the back of the van. The attackers were carefully moving towards where they thought their prey were hiding, which in reality left their backs facing them. The women ran up behind them, tackling three of the four—Mel went for an old fashioned sandbag, arms and legs locking her weight around the person’s torso to bring the figure to the ground, and a solid blow from the heel of her hand had them going limp.

“He’s running!”

Mel looked up to see the fourth attacker close the door of the idling van, the tires screeching as he took off. Niko leapt from her unconscious subject and darted through the parking lot parallel to it, ignoring Jada’s call to her to let him go. The witches could only watch as the van inevitably turned to head towards the exit, bringing it straight towards Niko.

Putting her head down, Niko sprinted directly at the oncoming vehicle, and Mel’s heart might’ve stopped in the moment before they collided, except then the bear was there, still moving at full speed. The crunch of metal and shattering glass made Mel and Jada wince as the beast shouldered into the front of the van, stopping it dead with so much force that the back tires left the ground and sending the attacker—apparently not wearing a seatbelt—flying through the windshield. The robed figure landed some twenty feet away, coughing and otherwise staying put.

Everything stilled. They were safe, for the moment. The bear shoved the van backwards, and the front bumper fell off as it rolled, as well as two tires.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” shouted Jada, kicking one of the dropped crossbows. Blood coated her arm from shoulder to elbow, and her green eyes looked frenzied. “Did my parents do this?”

“We have to get out of here,” said Mel quickly, watching as Niko limped back towards them. “Harry can take care of anyone who saw a bear fight a van, but we need to leave. Can you get us out of here?”

Some of the hooded figures were beginning to stir. Mel was opening her mouth to call for Harry when Jada abruptly nodded. When she had a firm hold on both passengers, they blinked away in a bolt of lightning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Mel was talking to the woman in the bar during the film screening, I almost bounced out of my seat thinking YO, ZELDA. Headcanon. You'll rip that from my cold, dead hands.


	4. Touched by a Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jada, Niko, and Mel go after the witch hunter threat and uncover a new one. Macy finds herself living the Mary Sue dream in her favorite TV show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience! I actually legitimately did not expect S1 to end the way it did and thought we'd get our Melko endgame, so that changes how I'm approaching the next few chapters of this (and my ultimate goal with this series).

By the time Jessa, Niko’s friend and a surgeon, made it to the loft apartment above the tattoo parlor, Mel was thoroughly convinced it was the right call. None of Niko or Jada’s wounds could be healed magically, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped with constant pressure. They elected to leave Jada’s bolt in until the doctor got there, worried about the important ligaments that surrounded the area.

When Mel slid open the door, Jessa’s dark eyebrows shot to her hairline. “Oh. Hi… Mel?”

They hadn’t seen each other in person since the fateful dinner party that brought Niko back into this life—so Mel could understand her surprise. She tried to act like nothing was amiss as she greeted, “Jessa, hi. Niko’s in here. Thanks for coming.”

Carrying a large duffel, Jessa cautiously followed her into the large space. She gasped softly upon seeing the two injured women on the bed, nearly losing her grip on her bag. “What-what _in the name of Jesus H. Christ_ is going on here?”

“Jessa, I know this is strange,” began Niko, strained.

_“Strange?_ I’m not a mob doctor, Hamada—is that an _arrow?”_

“Crossbow bolt,” corrected Mel, immediately regretting it.

“Did you _duel_ or something? And what are those scars? Are you a mercenary now? Is that what ‘PI’ is code for?”

“I’ll explain everything later, but can you—please?” Niko twisted her shoulders to show the bleeding holes over her shoulder blades.

“Fucking Hell, Hamada,” sighed the surgeon, but she set down her bag, and after a moment of clear inner turmoil, opened it. To Jada, she introduced herself, “Dr. Jessa Jackson. MD, to be clear. I’m a gen med surgeon, but mostly I teach.”

“Jada,” greeted the whitelighter-witch through clenched teeth. “Business owner.”

“And just to make sure, Jada, because I’ve got to keep some semblance of my ethics, are you okay with me treating you here? I would really recommend—“

“That’s all right. If Niko trusts you, I trust you.”

That seemed to satisfy the surgeon, for now. Niko’s stitches came first, five for each torn wound. Jessa muttered about Doctors Without Borders as she steeled herself to rip the bolt from Jada’s shoulder, having palpated the area enough to be confident it wouldn’t cause permanent damage. She stitched up the resulting hole and left them both a prescription for antibiotics, though Mel knew they could never fill them.

After letting her pack up and as she waited for an explanation, Mel froze the surgeon. Jada touched Jessa’s temple, erasing the doctor’s memory and sending her on her way, thinking she’d made a house call for a fevered child.

“That _cannot_ happen often,” announced Niko when they were sure they were alone.

“It’s better than a bottle of vodka and butterfly bandages. It’s fine,” offered Mel, sounding a little unbelievable even to her own ears. “You guys are gonna be fine, and Jessa will never know.”

The investigator sighed, but backed off that subject as she wondered aloud, “Who _were_ those people, anyway?”

With a small groan, Jada sat up straighter, her green eyes swirling with worry. “Witch hunters. But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Witch hunters?” _Great._ Mel mentally added _them_ to the list of things that could go bump in the night.

“They must have found a way to become immune to magic.” The whitelighter-witch winced, but got to her feet to dig through one of her dressers. “My parents wouldn’t know how to hire witch hunters. They’re not exactly on Craigslist.”

“So then who’s been talking to me?” asked Niko, frowning. “I should’ve looked closer.”

“Nah, man, you didn’t cause this. I listened to that call, and it sounded just like how I remember my dad. _Someone_ duped us, but at least we know they’re trying to get to me, specifically.”

“I’ll trace the number, see if any of my hacker friends can figure something out.”

“You have hacker friends?” Jada lifted an eyebrow as she turned from the drawers, pulling a clean shirt over her head.

Niko smirked back at her. “It’s called cultivating sources. 2019 police work, my friend.”

“You mean, you knew a bunch of nerds in college.”

“I knew a bunch of nerds in college, yeah.”

Mel rolled her eyes, waiting for them to finish their banter. When they finally ran out of jibes, Jada teleported Niko to the safehouse to get to work on exposing the imposters, and then she popped back to take Mel home, dropping her in the living room of Vera-Vaughn manor.

The whitelighter-witched paused before leaving, and she took a deep breath. “Thank you, for saving me. I thought it was over when those guys came out of the van.”

“I may not be able to hear you call, but whitelighters should have people they can rely on, too. You’ve been there for us so many times.” The time witch tilted her head, recognizing the guilt in those striking features. “Seriously. No oaths or apologies needed—you’re one of us.”

“Aw, Vera… you’re messing with my generally threatening and stoic demeanor,” joked Jada, though her voice wavered slightly.

“The promise still stands. You can be as threaten-y and stoic as you want.”

Her emerald eyes brightened a bit, and Jada nodded before thanking her again and disappearing in a flash.

Shortly, Mel heard the muffled sound of her sisters talking in the kitchen, and she smelled baked goods as she walked towards it.

“...can keep it under control,” Maggie was saying, and then a pause. “You smell something… burning? Oh my God, _Macy,_ your hand!”

Mel rounded the corner at an almost-run, just in time to see Macy lift her hand from the oven. Her older sister’s palm glowed red even from across the room, and the snarled flesh made Mel stop in her tracks. “Oh my God—Harry!”

“I didn’t feel anything,” Macy was saying, almost dazed, as their whitelighter apparated into the living room and hurried towards her, guiding her to the dining table and sitting down next to her to examine the burn.

It made Mel’s stomach clench. Not just the angry, melted flesh of Macy’s hand, but the red flag that her sister was sitting completely still, in no apparent pain, as Harry poked and prodded.

“The skin seems to be thickening, the nerves fraying,” the whitelighter was saying under his breath. He lifted his head to add, “Dulling your pain receptors.”

“Why would that happen?” asked Macy, firmly.

“Well, these are common characteristics… of a demon.”

Mel’s heart hit her toes. _No._

“Which means whatever demon essence is in you could be presenting itself,” finished Harry.

Maggie interrupted, “Why now, after 29 years?”

“Well, there are some things beyond my scope of knowledge.” Harry paused to heal the burn, the glow of blue light leaving the skin exactly how it had been before. “Macy, you really ought to seek counsel from… the Elders.”

“No way,” Mel snapped immediately.

“Now, Melanie—“

“We may be in some kind of truce right now, but as soon as we give the upper hand back—no. They haven’t done anything to earn our trust back.”

“That was the fake Chancellor,” argued Maggie. “What about Charity and Quri?”

“I’m not convinced only Tychon and Braun were involved.”

They kept arguing back and forth, volume rising, until suddenly Macy’s voice interrupted, loudly cutting through their squabbling: “Can we all just… _please_ stop? I can’t talk about this right now.”

Shamed, Mel’s jaw clicked shut. She hated the devastated look on Macy’s face, and she hated even more that she couldn’t do anything to help. This maddeningly helpless feeling that had mostly gone away after their triumph over Braun—but between witch hunters and the slow creep of Macy’s inner demon, all of that insecurity and feelings of ignorance came rushing back, as if they had never left.

Maggie called after Macy as the oldest sister grabbed an entire chocolate cake and went upstairs, armed with a spoon. “That’s great.”

The remaining three exchanged guilty looks, and it was Harry who first broke the silence: “Sorry, ladies. I know that all we want is for… to find a way to cure her.”

“Is this even something the Elders are going to know? Truly?” asked Mel, exasperated, but grateful for his olive branch.

“I believe it’s… doubtful that they would have a cure, but they will certainly be able to provide us with important details. Context. Things to try.”

“And do you think they’ll help us with this, despite everything?”

“They allowed me to stay with you, which is unprecedented, really. So allow me to _try.”_

 

* * *

 

“Their names are Jennifer and Jerry Finch, Jr. Adopted children of real estate mogul Gerald Finch.” Niko held out her tablet, scrolling back and forth between pictures of said Finches. “We used the phone number to pinpoint location

and cross-referenced with online activity tied to the number, and then IP address.”

“Creepy,” grunted Jada. “Yeah, I know exactly who they are—the Finches built a fortune through money laundering and tax evasion. So two years ago, I put a hex on their dad, forcing him to give everything away for charity. His kids must have found out.”

“And we have a motive.” Niko stood, tucking the tablet under her arm. “I told them I didn’t care what happened to you, as long as I got paid.”

“Cold bastard Hamada,” laughed the whitelighter-witch. “You sure they bought it?”

“Hello, ex-cop?”

“Okay, so—“ Mel cleared her throat. “What’s the plan?”

“Well, we know it’s possible that they’re immune to magic since they’ve been working with witch hunters... bu-ut, they’re _not_ immune to giant bears swinging them into a wall.”

Niko scoffed. “Two little ol’ humans and you want to bring out the bear?”

_Oh my God._ Mel admired the friendship between Niko and Jada, maybe secretly bordering on a little jealous of it, but they tended to goad each other into less than safe situations, like the time Niko bet Jada that she couldn’t power an entire ferris wheel with her lightning while they’d been searching a carnival for a gremlin. As it turned out, Jada _could_ , and the gremlin came barreling out of one of the baskets as it reached the ground level, nearly ripping into Jada’s arm as it went.

“No, no. I see how it is. Mel and I got this. Right, Vera?”

That made Niko bristle, and Mel reached out a hand to her wrist, squeezing softly. “You prowl around outside and make sure there’s no backup. We’ll take care of the Finches. _You_ started this, anyway.”

 

* * *

 

Unhappily grumbling to herself, Niko stepped out of her car while eyeballing the quiet wharf. Jada and Mel were talking about their plan of attack, and she felt a twist of regret at having needled her friend into dangerous territory, much less her girlfriend. The area wasn’t well lit, but it wasn’t completely dark either, and if she didn’t want to have to send Harry on another chase of human minds to erase, she’d need to be careful about shifting in the open. Ships on the river stopped by at all hours.

“...we use magic on ourselves,” Jada was saying to Mel, lips curled into an easy smirk. She pulled a small bottle from her pocket and took a drag of it, exhaling a swirling cloud of purple smoke.

It materialized into… another Jada, arms crossed, also smirking back at them as she said, “Your turn.”

_Oh._ Niko watched as Mel finished the potion, and then there were two of her girlfriend standing on the dock… There was a sharp, metallic _crack,_ and Niko’s hand suddenly ripped free of the car door, the bent handle still in her fingers. “Ah… oops. Sorry. I, uh… cool trick, Jay.”

While the Mels grinned at her, all too knowing, Jada rolled her eyes and let out a low breath. “Can’t take you two anywhere.”

“It’s—that’s not—I, ahem.” Niko tossed the mangled handle to the ground and cleared her throat, tearing her eyes, but maybe not her mind, away from the doubled women. “Carry on. Call me if you need me.”

Trying to clear her delinquent brain, Niko began to move around the building while Jada and Mel went inside the warehouse. She didn’t see signs of snipers on rooftops or waiting vans of witch hunters and took it as a good sign, but her hackles were raised nonetheless; the investigator would have enjoyed throttling these folks for pulling that stunt on her friend.

As she walked through a pseudo breezeway of tall, stacked crates, Niko picked up a plethora of scents, almost none of them pleasant—rotting vegetables, polluted water, and fish carcasses, mainly. But when something acrid and sharp hit her nose, she froze, listening. Water lapping against the dock. The bump of boats against buffers. And a strange, heavy sort of scrabbling noise, like a metal brush on stone _._

“Hello, bear,” called a voice, as a huge figure moved to block the exit from the corridor.

Niko resisted the urge to shift immediately, focusing on making out the creature that had come for her. _The predators,_ Naledi had warned. That was an unfortunately wide category of potential attackers. She didn’t particularly hope to meet a weregrizzly.

“You should have come to us, before it had to come to this,” continued the shadow.

“I have a coven,” shouted the investigator, trying to keep the snarl from her voice.

The other were took a spidery step forward, just into the light enough that Niko could finally see what it was: a reptile, gray-green, with the head of a velociraptor and a stout, muscular body. Somehow, she hadn’t been expecting _that_ classification of predator, and it took a moment for her mind to come up with the name: _komodo dragon._ Except, it was the size of a hatchback car.

“What you need is a pack,” answered a second voice, and dread bloomed in her stomach. This one came from directly above her head.

Now, she did shift into the bear, letting its thundering growl vibrate from its barre chest as she looked up into the glowing green eyes of a big cat. She registered steak knife-sized teeth and curling whiskers.

Both attackers made their move at once, and all Niko could do was throw up an arm to stop the pouncing, grayish cat from reaching her neck with its outstretched claws. Its teeth sunk into the flesh there as a consolation prize, clamped tight even as she swung the feline into one of the crates with enough force to snap it into splinters.

The lizard burst out of the resulting cloud of dust, jaws open, and launched itself towards her head. Niko hauled the cat attached to her arm up into its trajectory, and the two creatures shrieked unhappily as triangular jaws closed around the cat’s flank by accident. It was enough of a surprise that the beast loosened its teeth, and Niko used her other arm to rip the thing off of her, throwing it into another crate. She just barely managed to get both paws on the fleshy neck of the dragon as it lunged again, jaws snapping.

“I’m not your enemy,” growled Niko, pushing the reptile backwards. “Why are you doing this?”

“The curse must be contained,” came the choked reply, and it was an unexpected enough reply that in the extra second it took to process, Niko didn’t notice the cat returning to the fray—until its teeth were sinking into her side.

The bear bellowed and stumbled as the lizard broke free from the grip of her paws, lunging towards her neck again. Niko’s brain could only spit out: _This is turning out to be quite the terrible twenty-four hours._ The cat snarled into its hold on her flesh, driving her to the ground, and the lizard closed its jaws around her throat. She could feel the bear begin to panic, making groaning, desperate noises, and then _finally,_ a useful thought popped into her mind.

The other two weres made startled noises as she shifted back to human, immediately shoving a hand into her pocket to grip the stopwatch there. She rapidly clicked the top three times, and a pulse of purple light exploded across them.

It worked. The change in size between the bear and the woman momentarily broke the grip of the predators’ jaws, and she was able to scramble backwards out from under them. Wasting no time to observe, she limped back the way she’d come, gasping for breath as her body worked to heal the new holes, quite sure that Jessa’s stitches had come undone, too. She heard the creatures roar as they came unfrozen and stumbled over a chunk of debris, panic gripping her chest at the idea of surviving another round—

“Hey, Rampage! Fuck off!”

Mel and Jada sprinted into view just as Niko fell to hands and knees, and the whitelighter-witch immediately loosed a lightning bolt over her head.

“It’s the pack,” gasped Niko when Mel skidded to her side.

“We’ve got you.” The witch gripped her hand, and after one last lightning attack, Jada grabbed Mel’s shoulder and teleported them to the safehouse.

 

* * *

 

It was Chloe who fixed Niko’s reopened wounds on her back, using her sewing kit and a stitch she looked up on YouTube to close them again. The pixie seemed a little green afterwards, and Jada helped her to the kitchen to wash her bloodied hands.

Mel had been a pacing mess the whole time, her mind racing with the new threat. They’d easily dispatched the Finches with some hand-to-hand action, and then hexed them to confess to the plot to murder Jada. Both of them had been feeling pretty good about it… until the moment Niko’s terror and pain hit Mel in the chest, through their connection. She’d looked through her girlfriend’s eyes to see a mess of blood, fur, and teeth.

The next minute blurred to nothing, just frantic searching and the rising sounds of a roaring bear, until she saw the battling beasts. Both strange creatures fighting Niko were bigger than they had any natural right to be, and she knew immediately that the were pack had delivered on their threat. The wounds from the other weres healed like normal, at least, but the fresh batch of scars across her girlfriend’s skin still made the witch’s chest clench with residual worry.

As the door to the bedroom closed, locking them in safely for the night, Mel hovered there, observing her battered and beaten investigator.

“C’mere,” murmured Niko as she slumped on the comforter.

The witch climbed into the bed next to her, and her heart raced, but not for the usual reasons. “Baby… I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry? You saved my life.” Niko tugged gently on her elbow until the shorter woman curled against her side. “But, you do know… I should go to them. See what they want, before this gets worse.”

“They almost killed you tonight. Five minutes, we were gone—and you almost died.” Mel put a hand across Niko’s chest and pressed in until she could feel the heartbeat underneath. It was soothing, but nowhere near enough to chase away the residual panic in her limbs. “And that was just two of them. Who knows how many more there are?”

“Which is exactly why I should go to them. I’ll take Zelda with me.”

“Oh yeah, because she’s definitely a warrior. I’d rather you take Katrina.”

“Not a bad idea.”

Before Mel could give her a smack on the shoulder for that, her phone buzzed, and she fished it from her pocket to look while Niko distractingly kissed under her jaw.

7:04 pm lil sis: um weird thing, macy and harry are stuck in the tv

7:05 pm lil sis: kinda 911

“Duty calls?” sighed Niko, flopping back on the bed. It was somewhat ironic—back before magic, it had always been Mel waiting on _her_ to come home. She had to admit that it didn’t feel _great._

“Duty calls. Keep it warm for me, hmm?”

“Gross,” protested the investigator, but she laughed as she launched a pillow at Mel’s shoulder.

 

* * *

 

_“If Maggie and Mel can manage to open a portal, we need to be certain The Devil can’t travel through with us.”_

_“Then we have to find a way to kill him.”_

Gideon, the “bad boy” of the television duo, scoffed. “Good luck with that—the only thing strong enough to kill The Devil is The Devil himself.”

“Yeah, we know, the red guy just said that, but thanks,” said Maggie with condescending sweetness over the countertop. And then, under her breath, she added: “God, the characters in this show repeat a lot of exposition.”

After dragging the brothers out of The Haunt and leaving them tied up in the kitchen, Mel had been studiously working on the portal potion with her sister, but the relentlessly asinine chatter of their guests was making concentration monumentally difficult. Not to mention the clock ticking down to the end of the episode, _and_ the ending of Macy and Harry. She could’ve throttled the angels in her angrier days, or with a little more time on this particular one.

With all of that going on at once, Mel didn’t notice the last instruction until the final ingredient had been added: _Let rest for two weeks._

“Shit,” she muttered, turning to her sister. “Maggie, it says the potion takes two weeks for full potency.”

“We’ve got two _minutes,_ ” sighs the empath, eyes wide.

“Wait—wait. Jada told me—Jada!”

The whitelighter-witch appeared within a heartbeat, looking a little panicked under the white-blue of her lightning.

“Jada, details aside, can I age this potion with my time powers?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Her green eyes fell on the two angels, and she quirked an eyebrow, but continued, “Whatever you’re in the middle of, yes. Here, put your hands around the flask.”

Nodding, Mel pressed her palms into the rounded glass, and she let her eyes slip closed.

“Using your power over time is like flexing a muscle,” began the whitelighter-witch softly, but firmly. “Flex your fingers, your wrists. Think about your freeze, what it feels like when you throw it. Now take hold of that feeling and press it into the glass—a potion is like a chemical reaction, but instead of energy, it uses magic. Imagine the ingredients turning, stirring, melting into something new…”

The feeling was near indescribable. It _was_ like her freeze, where something, some part of the air, screeched to a halt under her will—except this was ten times more intense, like her magic itself was seeping into the glass, and maybe it was. Whatever the case, when she opened her eyes, Mel saw the liquid had changed from clear to honey brown, and she let out a harsh breath in relief.

“Nice work, Vera,” said Jada with a grin. “Now, you wanna let me in on why you’ve got two TV characters in your living room?”

Maggie picked up the laptop and turned it for the whitelighter-witch to see, eliciting a rare gasp from their friend.

“That’s… That’s new,” she chuckled, nervously.

“We have to wait for them to stop The Devil, and then swap out for… these meatheads.” Maggie made a displeased noise, and then cleared her throat as the two burly men made clear how affronted they were by the characterization. “Come on, let’s get all this upstairs.”

As Macy and Harry carried out their plan on the small screen, the three witches sat hunched around the laptop, watching helplessly while the duo apparated out of their cage, and then their oldest sister hid behind the chamber doors with her sword.

“Solid swing,” commented Jada, almost idly, as Macy slashed one of The Devil’s horns off and Harry scrambled for the piece that hit the floor.

“Show’s over,” barked Macy, lunging for The Devil, who lurched back—straight into the sharp tip of the horn Harry drove between his ribs. The demon screamed and roared, but quickly _poofed_ into dust.

Mel poured the potion over the computer, and the portal sprang to life behind them, both on screen and in the attic, and they were untying the brothers when Macy and Harry finally appeared through the portal.

“Oh my God,” breathed Maggie, rushing towards them. “I love you, but I have so many questions!”

Macy laughed as they embraced, replying, “It’s been one of those nights, huh?”

“One of those weeks,” confirmed Mel as she came in for her own hug, pausing longer than she might normally would have to hold her sister close. _These are common characteristics… of a demon._

Whatever their pride in rescuing Macy and Harry from an eternity in syndication, the Charmed Ones faced a threat with no ending in sight, and from within their own home. There was no telling how many more hugs she had with her big sister.

They watched the finale of _Heaven’s Vice_ together in Macy’s bed, quiet and comfortable together, before saying their goodnights, reserving a discussion about what they do next for the clear light of morning.

With the attack at the harbor fresh on her mind, Mel braved her own exhaustion to drive back to the safehouse, breathing a long sigh of relief when the warm lights of the house, seemingly unharmed, came into view. The green eyes of a colony cat, then two, looked back at her as the headlights passed, and she supposed if the cats were hanging around, nothing horrible had had happened.

That was confirmed when the time witch found Niko asleep in bed, her tablet flat on her stomach with her head awkwardly lolled back on stacked pillows. As Mel quietly approached, the investigator’s nose twitched first, then her eyes opened to slits as a sleepy smile spread across her face.

“Hey,” she greeted, sinking onto the comforter.

“You get Macy and Harry out of the TV?” Niko’s voice was hoarse, but she yawned and sat up, pulling aside the covers to let her girlfriend wiggle in next to her.

Mel nodded and glanced down as Niko turned over the tablet, opened to Apple Maps, and set it on the bedside table.

“Too bad she couldn’t have pulled Xena and Gabrielle out.” Niko craned her neck to try to catch Mel’s eye, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just… I’m really worried about Macy. We just got her back in the family, and now this demon stuff.”

Niko held out an arm, and Mel wasted no time accepting, all but collapsing against the investigator’s lap, back to chest, and resting her head on her shoulder. Some of the tightness in her belly dissolved, and more of it washed away as Niko’s palm brushed down her arm, soothing. “Any new developments in that area?”

“Not really. Macy’s going to go to the Elders for help. I think it’s a mistake,” sighed the witch, screwing her eyes shut. “I think it’ll backfire.”

The were nodded against her cheek, and then brushed her lips over her temple. “We won’t let anything happen to Macy,” Niko murmured, the words spoken with the reverence and commitment of gospel. “You vanquished a Harbinger and defeated the Elder Council. You’re the Charmed Ones.”

“I know… I’d just like to get some real answers, sometime soon.” Mel kissed the warm cheek near her face.

“You and me both, about a lot of things.”

Something about that response tickled at the back of Mel’s mind, but she was too warm and drowsy to think much more about it. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore. How’re your stitches?”

“Still there. It’s… It’s almost strange, having to heal like a human again. I’m having an Arthur Weasley moment about it.”

Mel chuckled. As much as she had walked in intending to bluster and vent about the day, the time witch found herself quickly melting into a more settled headspace as Niko’s wide hands began massaging her shoulders, strong fingers working out the knots near her neck with expert precision. Eventually, she dropped those hands down to Mel’s thighs, continuing the superficially innocent massage on her quads for a little while before venturing up, to the apex of her legs, and paused.

“What’s wrong?” breathed the witch after a silent beat, and she moved to twist around to look Niko, but her girlfriend dropped her chin to Mel’s shoulder so they were cheek to cheek.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” murmured the were, pressing kisses to the base of her neck in between the words. As if to emphasize the answer, Niko’s fingers slid higher again. “I love you, Melanie Vera. I know that… there’s a lot going on right now. I just want you to know that no matter what happens, I love you.”

Again, something about the specificity of the words, the quiet tone made Mel’s subconscious perk up its ears, but then Niko’s fingertips slipped into her underwear, and everything other than the jump of her pulse and the heat of Niko’s mouth on her neck melted away. The were wrapped one arm around her chest, holding her tightly in place, while the other curved until Niko’s experienced fingers nudged between her lower lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This chapter gave me so much grief!

**Author's Note:**

> come yell about how much we love Marisol with me on tumblr [@trashyeggroll](https://trashyeggroll.tumblr.com/)


End file.
